Atlantic Republicanism in Nineteenth-Century Colombia: Spanish America's Challenge to the Contours of Atlantic History

Atlantic Republicanism in Nineteenth-Century Colombia: Spanish America's Challenge to the Contours of Atlantic History James E. Sanders Journal of World History, Volume 20, Number 1, March 2009, pp. 131-150 (Article) Published by University of Hawai'i Press DOI: 10.1353/jwh.0.0034 For additional information about this article http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jwh/summary/v020/20.1.sanders.html Access Provided by Utah State University Libraries at 04/18/11 8:35PM GMT Atlantic Republicanism in Nineteenth-Century Colombia: Spanish America’s Challenge to the Contours of Atlantic History* james e. sanders Utah State University hy does so much Atlantic history appear to end in 1825? Con- W sidering both historical processes and historiography, that date seems to have some obvious advantages, marking the end of the great Age of Revolution with the independence of much of Spanish Amer- ica. It is also a nice quarter-of-a-century break, better, one supposes, than 1826 when the Spanish garrison holding Callao, Peru fi nally sur- rendered. More importantly, choosing 1825 allows Atlantic history to end with a note of triumph, one that can be embraced by historians of all political stripes, be they conservative, liberal, or radical, as almost all claim some aspect of the Age of Revolution as their own. However, does the Age of Revolution accurately mark the end of the political processes of Atlantic history? The recent fl ourishing of scholarship on Latin American nation and state formation, even if most of it is not * I would like to thank Ann Farnsworth-Alvear, Aims McGuinness, Michael Ervin, Chris Conte, Jennifer Duncan, the anonymous reader for the Journal of World History, and my fellow 2007 LASA panelists who all provided comments on various versions of this paper. I would especially like to thank the archivists and librarians who provided so much help and guidance at the Archivo General de la Nación, the Archivo del Congreso, the Archivo Central del Cauca, the Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, and the Biblioteca Nacional in Colombia, the Museo Histórico Municipal in Uruguay, and the Library of Congress in the United States. Support for researching and writing this article came from a Utah State University New Faculty Research Grant and the John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress. Journal of World History, Vol. 20, No. 1 © 2009 by University of Hawai‘i Press 131 132 journal of world history, march 2009 directly engaged with Atlantic history, strongly suggests that the Age of Revolution’s debates over citizenship, sovereignty, and rights continued unabated, even intensifi ed, in the nineteenth century.1 What would be the ramifi cations of taking this scholarship seriously for understanding the history of the Atlantic world system? I argue that, at least for Span- ish America, the struggles over visions of republicanism and democracy 1 I hesitate to try to cite all of this literature, as it has grown so vast; a partial listing of key works include Florencia E. Mallon, Peasant and Nation: The Making of Post-Colonial Mexico and Peru (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniel Nugent, eds., Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1994); Antonio Annino and François-Xavier Guerra, eds., Inventando la nación: Iberoamérica, siglo XIX (México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2003); Hilda Sábato, ed., Ciudadanía política y formación de las naciones: Perspectives históricas de América Latina (México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1999); Mark Thurner, From Two Republics to One Divided: Contradictions of Post- Colonial Nationmaking in Andean Peru (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1997); Peter F. Guardino, The Time of Liberty: Popular Political Culture in Oaxaca, 1750 –1850 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005); Elías José Palti, La invención de una legitimidad: Razón y retórica en el pensamiento mexicano del siglo XIX (México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2005); Sarah C. Chambers, From Subjects to Citizens: Honor, Gender, and Politics in Arequipa, Peru, 1780 –1854 (University Park, Pa.: Penn State University Press, 1999); Ada Ferrer, Insurgent Cuba: Race, Nation, and Revolution, 1868–1898 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999); Ulrich Muecke, Political Culture in Nineteenth-Century Peru: The Rise of the Partido Civil (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004); Francie R. Chassen- López, From Liberal to Revolutionary Oaxaca: The View from the South, Mexico, 1867–1911 (University Park, Pa.: Penn State University Press, 2004); Greg Grandin, The Blood of Guatemala: A History of Race and Nation (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2000); Charles F. Walker, Smoldering Ashes: Cuzco and the Creation of Republican Peru, 1780 –1840 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999); Marixa Lasso, “Race War and Nation in Caribbean Gran Colombia, Cartagena, 1810–1832,” American Historical Review 111 (April 2006): 336 –361; Jorge Myers, Orden y virtud: El discurso republicano en el régimen rosista (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, 1995); Guy P. C. Thomson with David G. LaFrance, Patriotism, Politics, and Popular Liberalism in Nineteenth-Century Mexico: Juan Francisco Lucas and the Puebla Sierra (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1999); James E. Sanders, Contentious Republicans: Popular Politics, Race, and Class in Nineteenth-Century Colombia (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2004); Brooke Larson, Trials of Nation Making: Liberalism, Race, and Ethnicity in the Andes, 1810 –1910 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); Richard A. Warren, Vagrants and Citizens: Politics and the Masses in Mexico City from Colony to Republic (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 2001); Jer- emy Adelman, Sovereignty and Revolution in the Iberian Atlantic (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2006); Cecilia Méndez, The Plebeian Republic: The Huanta Rebellion and the Making of the Peruvian State, 1820 –1850 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005); Peter M. Beattie, The Tribute of Blood: Army, Honor, Race, and Nation in Brazil, 1864–1945 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001); Gunnar Mendoza L., Rossana Barragán R., Dora Cajías, and Seemin Qayum, eds., El siglo XIX: Bolivia y América Latina (La Paz: Muela del Diablo Editores, 1997); Victor M. Uribe-Uran, ed., State and Society in Spanish America during the Age of Revolution (Wilmington, Del.: SR Books, 2001); Ricardo D. Salvatore; Wandering Paysanos: State Order and Subaltern Experience in Argentina during the Rosas Era (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2003); and Antonio Annino, ed., Historia de las elec- ciones en Iberoamérica, siglo XIX: De la formación del espacio político nacional (Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995). Sanders: Atlantic Republicanism in 19th-Century Colombia 133 that wracked the region throughout most of the nineteenth century cannot be understood outside of an Atlantic context, nor can the full history of the Atlantic Age of Revolution be complete without taking into account the democratic and republican developments of mid nineteenth-century Spanish America. Ending studies of the Atlantic world in the early nineteenth century has worked to obscure the importance of these later political struggles and their Atlantic character, thereby emphasizing events and processes in the North Atlantic, while ignor- ing sites of democratic innovation such as Colombia, which, as I will argue below, enjoyed universal adult male suffrage, racially inclusive citizenship, and active subaltern participation in the political system by the 1850s. Likewise, keeping these political struggles in their inter- national context helps to avoid classifying Spanish American republics as fundamentally alien to North American and European politics, instead illuminating the Atlantic nature of the republican political culture of Spanish America until the 1880s—when democratic republicanism declined as the region fully entered into a new neo-colonial global economic and political system.2 Of course, not everyone would choose 1825 and the events of the Age of Revolution as the end of Atlantic history, but the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century does seem to be a popular, although not universal, termination of the Atlantic project. Most studies’ peri- odization follows the establishment and eventual termination of formal colonies, which, given the intricate links between the Atlantic World and colonialism, seems quite logical.3 Yet the nation and state forma- 2 For Latin American politics as being fundamentally different from the North Atlantic politics, see Richard M. Morse, New World Soundings: Culture and Ideology in the Americas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989); Howard J. Wiarda, ed., Politics and Social Change in Latin America: Still a Distinct Tradition, 3rd ed. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1992). 3 For examples of Atlantic histories ending in the early nineteenth or late eighteenth century, see Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005); Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic (Bos- ton: Beacon Press, 2000); Peggy Liss, Atlantic Empires: The Network of Trade and Revolution, 1713–1826 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983); R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution: A Political History of Europe and America,

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